Since Forbes hired me in 1995 to write a legal column, I’ve taken advantage of the great freedom the magazine grants its staff, to pursue stories about everything from books to billionaires. I’ve chased South Africa’s first black billionaire through a Cape Town shopping mall while admirers flocked around him, climbed inside the hidden chamber in the home of an antiquarian arms and armor dealer atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, and sipped Chateau Latour with one of Picasso’s grandsons in the Venice art museum of French tycoon François Pinault. I’ve edited the magazine’s Lifestyle section and opinion pieces by the likes of John Bogle and Gordon Bethune. As deputy leadership editor, these days I mostly write about careers and corporate social responsibility. I got my job at Forbes through a brilliant libertarian economist, Susan Lee, whom I used to put on television at MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Before that I covered law and lawyers for journalistic stickler, harsh taskmaster and the best teacher a young reporter could have had, Steven Brill.

Did Greg Smith Commit Career Suicide?

Career coaches say it was a mistake for Greg Smith to publicly criticize his boss, Lloyd Blankfein.

When Greg Smith decided to write a scathing op ed piece that ran in the New York Times yesterday, blasting his employer, Goldman Sachs, for sacrificing its clients’ best interest in favor of maximum profits, he violated a cardinal rule of career advancement: Do not bad-mouth your former employer. Career coaches and executive recruiters who have worked with finance professionals agree that making such a public statement foils any chances Smith, 33, might have had of working on Wall Street.

Roy Cohen, a New York career coach who worked as a regular outplacement consultant for Goldman Sachs from 1990-2004, says that Smith’s Times piece “raises questions about this fellow’s integrity and loyalty.” An even bigger issue, says Cohen: When Smith detailed how Goldman employees “callously … talk about ripping their clients off,” he put the livelihoods of the 30,000 people employed by the firm at risk. Goldman’s stock dropped 3.4% yesterday after the op ed appeared, though shares have been recovering some of their losses today. Employers will be wary of hiring someone who would intentionally cause such damage. According to a Timesstory today, Smith sent an email resignation to his bosses at 6:40 a.m. London time yesterday, 15 minutes before the op ed appeared.

Further, says Cohen, potential employers will be turned off by the fact that Smith seems to have inflated his role at the firm. The Times called him “executive director” in its author description, when it turns out he was a vice president. According to Cohen, after 12 years at Goldman, Smith should have at least advanced to managing director. Getting stuck in the vice president position means “something must have broken down” for Smith inside the firm, says Cohen. In a memo to employees yesterday, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and President Gary Cohn, whom Smith criticized in his piece, clarified that Smith was a vice president, not a director.

By holding himself out as superior to, and more ethical than, the firm where he worked, could Smith’s op ed be read as a job advertisement for himself? Not in finance, say recruiters and coaches. Cohen says that the kind of disillusionment with ethical standards that Smith expressed is common on Wall Street, but that it was “naïve” for Smith to blame his employers for his personal feelings. “It’s a problem in every financial institution,” says Cohen. Wise employees keep their sentiments to themselves, he says, and resign if they are unhappy.

Jesse Marrus, a former financial executive recruiter who now runs the finance jobs website StreetID.com, sees a slim chance that Smith could be picked up by a small hedge fund. But on the other hand, he says, “I don’t see anyone wanting to be associated with someone who has muddied the waters.”

New York career coach Eileen Wolkstein, who has worked with many clients in finance, says she doesn’t think Smith’s career is completely over, though she agrees that he won’t get a job in finance, or any job until the furor over his op ed dies down. Then he should tap into the network at his alma mater, Stanford. “Are there buddies who could use his expertise in a start-up?” she says. “Sure.” Marrus guesses that Smith could get a job in green energy or another industry several steps removed from Wall Street.

Those may be possibilities, says Dale Winston of headhunting firm Amrop Battalia Winston, but the fact remains that Smith aired his employer’s dirty laundry in the most public of forums, which would make any company wary. “He should have vented to his friends and colleagues and resigned gracefully,” says Winston.

Smith has not spoken to the media since his piece ran. Requests for comment sent from Forbes to his Facebook account have gone unreturned. This morning the Timesquoted a friend who attended Stanford with Smith, Miami lawyer Daniel Lipkin, as saying Smith “sounded confident and felt good about his decision to go public,” after the article appeared. The Times also says Smith had a sheet listing Goldman’s business principles taped to the wall next to his computer in London. “He has a really high moral fiber and really cared about the culture of the firm,” Lipkin told the Times.

Cohen, author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide, speculates that Smith is in fact angling for some kind of writing deal. “I’m envisioning that he’s going to get a huge, huge book contract,” says Cohen. “There’s nothing people like to read about more than Goldman, Sachs.”

Wolkstein sees one other career option for Smith. “He could become head of Occupy Wall Street,” she says. “But I don’t think that’s the kind of job he’s looking for.”

Update: Cohen is misinformed when he says Smith inflated his title. Smith did not. Goldman Sachs uses the title “executive director” in its London office to mean the same level as “vice president” in the U.S.

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Is this a nice way to threaten others who might want to share their opinion? A culture, whether that be country, company, or field of work has its own way to encourage if not force “desired” behavior.” An honest and open business, which many think Wall Street and Investment Banking should be built upon, should welcome critical discussion, especially about how business is done. What we are seeing is the rapid decline of the financial system that was established by the West. It is corrupt behavior like this, and this recent episode just lets us view how this field of work enforces and treats an individual, who under different circumstances would be treated as a hero or person otherwise in pursuit of excellence. The interests that be are out to destroy him, and the interests that be are out to make sure that others DO NOT FOLLOW in his footsteps. But, guess what? It is too late. Everyone has been warned, and I thank him for his honesty and integrity.

If “wise employees keep their sentiments to themselves…and resign if they are unhappy’” how does anything change in an industry that the public is recognizing as increasingly corrupt and abusive? Cheers to Smith for speaking up. If there are any financial institutions left that still practice the values they preach (admittedly a long shot), he should be able to find employment with them.

Greg is not talking about the US Marines in Iwo Jima here – it’s Goldman Sachs. GS is not the company one wants to say one works for; but to be fair, as a reader of Forbes, I myself am not about to pass up a chance to make millions at Goldman Sachs. When someone says they went to school in Cambridge and works on Wall Street – ordinary people translate it to Harvard and Goldman Sachs. Greg did not go to Harvard – he went to Stanford. Harvard does a much better job of training and it is hard to think of a Harvard grad who would have done this deed of disloyalty to Goldman Sachs. On the other hand, to be objective about it, the best one can say about Goldman Sachs is that they have failed capitalism and our way of life; the other extreme is course is that Goldman Sachs need the Mary Antoinette solution for the damage they have done to our world; I can Greeks lining up to see this one.

Ah, Mr. Roy Cohen, New York career coach; that is the cowardly, self-serving answer one would expect. The reason the nation and the world is so messed up is that there are fewer and fewer Greg Smiths that are willing to speak up.

I have been in sales for over twenty years and all the bright-eyed B-School execu-muppets think you just need to threaten a guy or gal with their job and all ethics and morals fly out the window.

Instead of “giong-along” like all the securities, mortgage and title, bank and investment sales people did (and have been since the great society members returned from WWII had the boomers who went into business schools & now think only of themselves) Mr. Smith stood up, knowing full well what the risk to himself was and to his career (he has already made a few million right?) and put a spotlight right on the cockroaches he knew best – his bosses and colleagues.

They can spin it all they want but I think this should shut down Goldman and make investors, especially the institutional guys with billions of retirement money, look harder at the ones left standing too.

Forbes should help shine the light on more of them too. Stop sucking up just because they advertise with you and start digging!

Ah, Mr. Roy Cohen, New York career coach; that is the cowardly, self-serving answer one would expect. The reason the nation and the world is so messed up is that there are fewer and fewer Greg Smiths that are willing to speak up.

I have been in sales for over twenty years and all the bright-eyed B-School execu-muppets think you just need to threaten a guy or gal with their job and all ethics and morals fly out the window and sales just keep going up..

Instead of “giong-along” like all the securities, mortgage and title, bank and investment sales people did (and have been since the great society members returned from WWII had the boomers who went into business schools & now think only of themselves) Mr. Smith stood up, knowing full well what the risk to himself was and to his career (he has already made a few million right?) and put a spotlight right on the cockroaches he knew best – his bosses and colleagues.

They can spin it all they want but I think this should shut down Goldman and make investors, especially the institutional guys with billions of retirement money, look harder at the ones left standing too.

Forbes should help shine the light on more of them too. Stop sucking up just because they advertise with you and start digging!

As a corporate lawyer, I know that if I were ever in a similar situation as Mr. Smith, I would have also resigned. Indeed, I believe that it would be my ethical duty to have done so, even if it would hurt my “career”. Of course, many people will stay in places like Goldman, knowing full well what is going on, and do it for their “career”.